BB&T Corporation at a Glance

Uppers

Downers

The Buzz

â€¢ "Profitable commercial bank"

â€¢ "Small regional, limited capital markets"

â€¢ "Good co-manager"

â€¢ "Richmond hurts status, middle-market focused"

About BB&T Corporation

THE SCOOP

Southern comfort
With over $163 billion in assets as of March 2010, Winston-Salem,
N.C.-based BB&T is the 10th-largest financial holding company
in the U.S. Through its subsidiaries, the firm offers retail
and commercial banking, brokerage, commercial finance, insurance,
trust and investment services through more than 1,800 branches
principally in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic States.
BB&T ranked No. 217 on Fortuneâ€™s 2010 list of the 500 top
corporations in the country, up considerably from its No. 260 spot
in 2009.

Small town story
Before BB&T grew to such proportions, it was more of a
small-town story. Its history begins like a late 19th-century
novel: Alpheus Branch, the son of a wealthy planter, moved to
eastern North Carolina to attend military school and married into a
prominent Wilson County family. He set up a small trade
business, through which he met Thomas Jefferson Hadley, who was
trying to set up an educational infrastructure in Wilson. The
duo thought the county could use a reliable bankâ€"swindlers were
taking citizensâ€™ money right and leftâ€"so they set up Branch and
Hadley in 1872. The county residents slowly started leasing
money from Branch and Hadley, using its loans to build up their
farms and plant a new crop, tobacco.

Branch bought Hadley out in 1887. As the years went on,
the bank added savings accounts, trust departments and, come World
War I, liberty bonds. Insurance and mortgage products were
offered by the early 1920s. When the stock market crashed in
1929, dozens of North Carolina banks had to close their
doors. BB&T survived and grew, doubling the number of
branches and tripling its assets between 1929 and 1933.

To help such a sprawling organization run efficiently, BB&T
management has streamlined the decision-making process, organizing
its banking network into 33 regional groups, each run by a separate
president. Each region is able to apply strategies and
policies applicable to its particular area without the red tape of
securing approval from BB&Tâ€™s headquarters.

Buyback time
In June 2009, BB&T announced that it was leaving the Troubled
Asset Relief Program by repurchasing the preferred stock it sold to
the U.S. Treasury in November 2008. The bank paid the
Treasury $3.1 billion along with a dividend payment of
approximately $13.9 million. In total, BB&Tâ€™s dividend
payments under the program came to about $92.7 million. All
in all, 10 banks have received permission from the TARP program to
repay their loans.

King of BB&T
Kelly King assumed the role of chief executive officer of BB&T
on January 1, 2009, after the retirement of John Allison, who had
served the company for 19 years as CEO. King took the helm
after more than 35 years with the company. The Raleigh native
was one of a group of young MBAs known as the â€œfab fiveâ€ who
shook up the company in the early-1980s. The group included
outgoing CEO John Allison, and fellow executives Ken Chalk, Scott
Reed and Kingâ€™s good friend Henry Williamson. Kingâ€™s
group was the driving force behind the series of acquisitions which
began in the late-1980s that eventually catapulted the company to
its spot as the 10th-largest financial holding company in the
country. Before being elected as CEO, King served as COO of
the firm.

Kingâ€™s era of leadership will undoubtedly be fraught with
challenges. King acknowledged the enormity of his task in a
press release announcing his promotion. â€œIf youâ€™re
someone who relishes a challenge, then you certainly couldnâ€™t ask
for a better time to assume the role as CEO of a major financial
services company than right now.â€ In light of the credit
crisis and complications in the residential mortgage industry, the
firm will focus on four main areas of improvement under Kingâ€™s
leadership; continuing to work through the credit crisis, revenue
growth, client service quality and expense control.

Just two weeks after his appointment as CEO of BB&T, Kelly
King was elected to service on the board of the directors of the
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. King will serve a three
year term as a â€œClass A director.â€

On January 1, 2010, one year after King assumed CEO duties, he
also took over as chairman of the firm, having been elected to the
spot at the end of 2009. As he did as CEO, King succeeded
Allison as chairman.